


The City Goes to The Sea

by TheWaffleBat



Series: Home From All The Ports [6]
Category: Assassin's Creed - All Media Types
Genre: Brasidas lives fuck you, Dad!Barnabas, Dad!Herodotus, Family Feels, Fix-It, Gen, Introspection, Spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-09
Updated: 2019-02-09
Packaged: 2019-10-20 02:08:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,690
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17613431
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheWaffleBat/pseuds/TheWaffleBat
Summary: Pythagoras, in another world, could have been Nikolaos on that deck, kissing Myrrine in the shadow of the sunset. Kassandra could have grown up in Sparta with a different kind of mentor to train and guide her, to actually prepare her for her own nonsense destiny. Alexios might never have had to become the Deimos who kissed the scar he’d given Brasidas late at night when he thought no one would find out about their trysts. So much hurt avoided, in that other world, that other simulation.Kassandra and her family, when all is said and done.





	The City Goes to The Sea

**Author's Note:**

> Title taken from Rudyard Kipling's _The Secret of The Machinery._

Thera was an ungodly piece of shit island hideous even in the golden light of the setting sun, and Kassandra was glad to put her back to it to look out across the wide sweep of Poseidon’s sea beneath the minoans’ crumbling eaves. Herodotus and Barnabas, warm at her sides, watched the sea too, Barnabas’ feet kicking through the water while the crew on the Adrestia readied the ship for an overnight stay.

She wanted to leave immediately, abandon Atlantis there on the bottom of the sea with it’s confusing messages given to someone else through her, or maybe just heard by mistake by her, never to open again. Pythagoras and his body abandoned cooling on the stone; just a man when he fell dead into her arms like any other bandit when she dragged her spear across his throat, paper-skinned and wrinkled like any other old scholar. The staff burned even through her underarmour where she had it hidden away, a faint pulse like heartbeat that she ignored because she would cross that bridge when she got to it, only- why did so many people want immortality? It just seemed the road to misery to her.

She sighed, looked to her hands folded in her lap. Looked to Alexios on the Adrestia’s deck, punching Stentor in his puppy-rough affection - not knowing how to show his care in any way that wasn’t violent, but still caring; still loving his family in whatever limited way he could. Ship life suited him a lot more than cooling his heels in Sparta - suited them all, really, and yet Kassandra only found herself thankful that Nikolaos seemed to accept Herodotus and Barnabas as his replacements, knowing that he’d lost forever whatever claim to fatherhood he’d had but still there when she needed him.

They all were, and Stentor was still an ass, and Myrrine was still somewhere between her mother and a stranger, too long estranged to have a true bond but still bonded long enough in her childhood that it was still there. Alexios still turned his shoulder to her like he thought she hadn’t seen him with Brasidas late at night, sharing a cup of wine and an awkward apology for Brasidas’ leg and the scar cleaved down his chest, or at least ignoring that she had.

Barnabas clapped a hand on her knee, jostling to get her attention. “Something worries you my friend?” He said, a smile in his aged, time-scarred face.

So different to Pythagoras, she thought - Barnabas was open where he had been closed, optimistic where he had been realistic, young where he had been weary. There could not have been more distance between them than if all the seas in the world was dividing them, and she _knew_ who she was meant to care more for - between her birth father and a random old man who’d had the good luck to be rescued from the Cyclops so long ago, only one of them had given the blood in her veins - and yet… and _yet_  Barnabas had been the one to care for her, teaching her to run her ship, to see the good in the world. What had Pythagoras done except to send her on some bullshit quest and then try to pull the wool over her eyes and keep Atlantis’ knowledge all to himself?

Ikaros swooped low through the sky, a sad cry whistling through the air as he mourned his old friend. Kassandra watched him, and she knew it was uncharitable but Ikaros, of the two of them, was the only one to have the right to feel sad that he was gone.

“My father,” She told them, “Was Pythagoras, gatekeeper of Atlantis. He’s dead.”

“Ah,” Said Herodotus, and Kassandra watched his eyes spark, hundreds of thousands of questions about him, about how he’d stayed alive, about the Isu, about the city spread out across the sea floor warmed by the heart of the volcano. “And you don’t mourn him, do you? Don’t give me that look!” He huffed when she glanced at him, “You forget that I know you. You care for people, of course - you wouldn’t have gone through half the trouble you have for your family if you didn’t - but you expect investment returned. You do not care without receiving care in return.”

“No, I don’t suppose I do,” She said; sighed, when she turned back to the water and felt Ikaros settle on her shoulder, leaning against the side of her head for comfort. “Barnabas,” She murmured, not sure why she had to ask but she _had to ask_ , “Why do you want a child of your own so much? What… What would you get out of it?”

Barnabas hummed, tapping his bearded chin as he thought. “Probably for the same reasons you let that wolf of yours sleep in your bed; it’s family. I’ve always wanted a child because I liked the thought of having one, wanted to take care of something.”

“Wanted to mother-hen,” Muttered Herodotus.

“Kassandra was bleeding to death from a minotaur horn to the gut, it was only reasonable I panicked,” Said Barnabas primly. He sighed fondly, took Kassandra’s hands in his own, squeezing gently. His face was kind, uncommonly serious as he watched her. “But, you wouldn’t ask if something wasn’t eating you. What is it about Pythagoras that’s worrying you, my friend? Any longer with that frown you’ll start looking almost as old as Herodotus and I!”

Myrrine, on the Adrestia’s deck, caught Nikolaos’ arm and gave his cheek a kiss, tugging Stentor into a hug like she was making the decision to love him just as much as her true son, not caring for the blood in his veins that was different to hers. Nikolaos turned his head and Myrrine’s head, too, with fingers tucked beneath her chin and gave her a true kiss, like the ones Kassandra remembered him giving her back in Sparta, when all the world was right and proper, not a blade of grass out of place. Family again, odd and stilted and with many more fathers and kinds of bloods than any other family in Greece, but still family. Made of jagged hurts and old grief, yes - pain still raw and stinging on some wounds like the raw pain on Brasidas’ scars in the wrong weather but _healing._ Together again, as they always should have been.

Pythagoras, in another world, could have been Nikolaos on that deck, kissing Myrrine in the shadow of the sunset. Kassandra could have grown up in Sparta with a different kind of mentor to train and guide her, to actually prepare her for her own nonsense destiny. Alexios might never have had to become the Deimos who kissed the scar he’d given Brasidas late at night when he thought no one would find out about their trysts. So much hurt avoided, in that other world, that other simulation.

“He told me,” Kassandra said after that long moment, gently taking Ikaros from her shoulder and settling him on her knee, combing her fingers through his feathers, “That he only had a child to continue his bloodline. That he didn’t care he was making a person, one who was _his daughter_. I… He didn’t care that I was his, or who I am now. He only wanted what I might become.”

What she _would_ become if destiny was true and followed the pathways she’d been shown, Alatheia at Atlantis and the Artefact she’d destroyed both, and wasn’t that an odd note of hilarity beneath it all? She barely understood half of what the voices were telling her, and she wondered if maybe she’d gone mad and everything was a vivid hallucination, still on Kephallonia and roaming the hills shouting obscenities at the sky to curse the gods that gave her the blood in her veins. It would certainly explain the minotaur and Medusa and the sphinx.

Herodotus snorted, vicious and short. “Yet he expected you to go the ends of the world for him. Hmph - so much for his supposed wisdom, if he didn’t see how he’d missed out on a truly remarkable daughter.”

“Bah,” Said Barnabas, flinging a hand through the air, “I never cared much for mathematics anyway. If he was too much a fool to see what kind of woman he was missing out on then we’ll have her as _our_ daughter instead, eh?”

Kassandra scowled at him, but couldn’t quite stop the smile. “I’m not a toy for you to fight over!”

“Of course you’re not a toy!” Said Barnabas indignantly, “You’re far too dangerous for that! That spear of yours? You’d stab a child to death in minutes! No, you’re far more like the only good knife at the dinner table, the one that always ends up in the back of someone’s hand when _someone_ decides that their little brother Stentor is a touch too big for his boots.” He glared at her pointedly, and Kassandra _did not_ blush at the reminder of that little _episode_ , the first time she’d brought Barnabas and Herodotus home with her.

“What I think he’s _trying_ to say,” Said Herodotus kindly, a small smile curving his mouth as he offered his hand to Ikaros and was allowed a single stroke down Ikaros’ back, “Is that we both love you, and your Nikolaos loves you, and Pythagoras was remarkably stupid if he couldn’t see what he’d missed. And that we are more than honoured to take his place, if you’d have us.”

She slung her arms around them while Ikaros took to the skies again; leaned her head on Herodotus’ shoulder because _of course_ she’d have them, and she’d been a terrible daughter if they didn’t already know that. She couldn’t _imagine_ having come so far without them by her side, or how far she could go into the vague future stretching far and lonely ahead, no one by her side except fleeting things with people there and gone again too fast to come to care about them. But she had them now, squeezed them close to her sides; she’d face that when she had to.

**Author's Note:**

> Just a quick thing: Brasidas' death was unnecessary and added nothing to the plot so I've chosen to ignore it. I know he's based on a real historical figure who did die in battle, but fuck that - Assassin's Creed is not and never was about historical accuracy (you can't have the Isu precursor bullshit and have the series be _accurate_ ) so Brasidas lives and I'll die on that hill.


End file.
